I made it to Alamosa!

Here's a close-up of the building most of my nursing classes will be held in.  For those of you who can't quite make out what it says, that's "Adams State Normal School," apparently it used to be a school for training teachers...umm not sure what that says about teachers : )

So, I survived the drive, the puppy did great, thanks in part to some sedatives from the vet, she mostly just curled up & slept on the passenger seat!  I left Portland Monday afternoon (Jan 9th), went through the entire state of Oregon, Idaho, Utah and into Colorado where I almost made it into Alamosa on Wednesday night, but couldn't do the last mountain pass in the daylight, so finally got to my apartment Thursday noon...

...and found that one of my heater's had broken so the place was freezing and my pipes had frozen and burst in both the kitchen and bathroom! Welcome to the Valley! (...I should add that my landlady was great & very responsive.)

 

So-far my classes have been going well. There's 24 students in my class, we're a pretty diverse group, from all over Colorado, a few from other states and even some students who have been in the US for a while, but grew up internationally (Vietnam, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Mexico...we've already started talking about needing to do potlucks!). We're classified as sophomores, so I'll have 2.5 years here, with summers off (which can be used to work as nursing assistants or do internships in), which I think will be a good pace to fit everything in.  I'm on a block system, so we'll just take one class at a time for 3-5 weeks so we can concentrate on just cramming in one thing at a time. Right now I have Pathophysiology in the morning, and then reading for it the rest of the day! I love that the focus in my classes has changed from "you have to memorize this for nursing school..." to "ok, I know we're going through a lot, and we'll keep building on it, but this is going to make you good nurses..."

I'll post more photos of my house & such when I can hook my camera up, but here's a few from around the town. I love all the adobe houses, and am happy with my little adobe "casita," hopefully it will keep the heat in during the winter and out during the summer like it's supposed to!



















 here's one of my neighbor's house, (which I think is a very sweet house!)




and here's some more of Adams State College (apparently we will soon be graduating to the name Adams State University, since we've been growing & have lots more Grad programs now!):

another of the building where my nursing classes are:





there's this cowboy statue out front



and here's our gym:






  my mom was asking about bears in town

and look, we even have a nice new football stadium!


Anyways, hope that gives you a little idea of where I'm living : )